Hi guys and girls, I'm about to begin college as an Electrical Engineering major and have begun looking for a laptop to buy. I'll be using this laptop to take notes during lecture, run android emulators and compile programs as I'm planning on getting into android development and do all of the things that EE students do although I don't know what they do yet. I might do a little video editing but that's not a big deciding factor. Does anyone reccomend any specifc model? I don't want it to be bigger than 15.6 inches and that can even be a little big for the lecture halls.

Thanks for the help

I'm planning on heading into college doing similar things, although not for android, but rather microprocessing. Also curious as to what a good laptop is. I have a Mac book pro 13" 2011, that should be plenty good, right?

For cheapness I recommend the Dell Latitude D620, if your budget if $100. I got mine for $40, but $100 can get battery, Windows 7 Pro, charger, etc. It's a 14" screen, Core 2 Duo processor, and does most things smoothly with 2GB RAM. It's also made of metal and very durable. This one for example costs $60; can upgrade the RAM for $10 and install Win 7 (which many people here can help with if you need it) and there's a cheap reliable computer.

There have been some studies recently that claim taking notes on paper is more effective than taking notes with a laptop. If you've got Wifi in classrooms, I think that the distractions online would be more attractive than taking notes.

I am too lazy to actually make my own post so instead I quote people and then don't say anything new.

I guess I'll second the Dell option. I've been using a Dell Inspiron 3521 (Dual 1.9GHz with 4GB) for almost a year for similar purposes. (Notes, report-writing, and engineering shenanigans). Even Windows 8.1 has not managed to ruin it.

The only possible downside may be the lack of a USB 3.0 port. There are three USB 2.0 ports, so it may or may not be a deal-breaker. The battery life seems decent.

The best part of buying Dell is that replacement parts from the Parts people http://www.parts-people.com/ are easily available.

I suspect a Latitude D620 would be a little too underpowered to run Matlab/LTSpice/Python etc. You probably want something a bit more modern. (As I sit here watching uBuntu install on a 9 year old AMD dual core processor machine, cause I'm cheap)

Dells are normally a good option. From my experiences, however, certain models have a tendency to get very hot.

I understand especially the Latitude E series do get hot, but also D620/D630s with the Nvidia GPU to a lesser degree; the Intel ones are less powerful, but better in heat, battery, and reliability. But as rfdave said, it won't be powerful enough to run fancy engineering programs.

What about Lenovo machines? I was looking into Lenovo and Dell

I've been quite pleased with my Thinkpad T520. It's a bit larger than I'd like for an "everyday carry" sort of machine, but it's a good tool when I'm away from an "actual workstation" and need to get things done. (I used it as my everyday computer when traveling abroad, for example.) I'm rather disappointed that they made the keyboards nasty (chiclet style now?!) with the -30 series and later, though.

If good build quality is important to you, the Thinkpad or Dell's Precision line are both good choices, but expect to pay more in accordance with the quality. I've not personally owned one, but it seems people also tend to be happy with the Ideapad line.

Do you anticipate this laptop being used for all your computing needs, or will you have a desktop to be used when not "on the go"? That answer affects my recommendations, potentially ranging down to "do you really need an actual laptop then?".

This will be my main computer as I will not have a desktop or I don't plan on having one anyway.